Damage.txt

[Trachmyr]

One of the games I really enjoied playing/customizing was Dark Reign. They used a Damage.txt file to allow diffrent weapons to affect diffrent armor(+shields in SE4), well... diffrently.

It would work like this... each armor would have a type (i.e., 1 or Standard, etc.), as would each type of shields. Each weapon would have a diffrent type of damage. When damage is then allocated to a ship, it looks at the Damage.txt file and sees that "Particle" weapons do only 50% damage to "phased" shields, or that "Dense" weapons do 200% damage to "standard" armor, or that "shield depleters" do 100% to all shields but 0% to all armor and componets. Additionally componets could be given a type (i.e., Normal, Engines, Weapons, Computers, Etc.), this way the old damage types can be completely removed in favor of this new system. Also a value of "X" means that the damage skips that componet, thus allowing for shield/armor skipping weapons. The only special types that need remain are warp/tractor weapos. (You could even have an entry for Planets, allowing some weapons to be good for planetary assault... while others pitiful at best)

What do you think?

[Aussie Gamer]

Sounds good but I think that due to the way the game is written, you would have to have to have different components to do the job!
I am not a programmer but I have been having a lot of fun writting new facilties and components etc. because it is a text file.

[Suicide Junkie]

That would be great, but would require a bunch of hardcode changes.

I would love it.

You should have all components & generator abilities with a type of "armor", to make the weapon damage %'s simpler.

Ie.
Damage type := Bullet
armor type 1 := flesh
armor effect 1 := 100%
armor type 2 := kevlar
armor effect 2 := 30%
armor type 3 := unphased energy shield
armor effect 3 := 1%

We could add all sorts of cool stuff, like "disruption shields" which only block seekers & torpedoes & rammings, but are penetrated by all beam weapons.

You could make a crazy component that is skipped by all weapons, so it is _always_ the Last component on your ship to be destroyed.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 17 April 2001).]

[Trachmyr]

Actually you could use the "General Group" (i.e., Weapons, Engines, Vehicle Control) that already exist for the diffrent componet types... and have default values in case of an armor/damage that isn't listed (and if MM adds this, all types would be default... until we mod them)

As for the file structure, I was thinking like this:

Defense Type:= Armor (Standard)
Number of entries:= 8
Default:= 100%
Particle:= 100%
Dense:= 200%
Phased:= 100%
Explosive:= 100%
Tachyon:= 100%
Shard:= Ignore
Depleter:= Ignore

Defense Type:= Shields (Standard)
Number of entries:= 8
Default:= 100%
Particle:= 100%
Dense:= 100%
Phased:= Ignore
Explosive:= 50%
Tachyon:= 400%
Shard:= 100%
Depleter:= 100%

Defense Type:= Componets (Default)
Number of entries:= 8
Default:= 100%
Particle:= 100%
Dense:= 50%
Phased:= 100%
Explosive:= 200%
Tachyon:= 100%
Shard:= 100%
Depleter:= 0%

etc.

[This message has been edited by Trachmyr (edited 17 April 2001).]